Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Natural Sciences

Second Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Skripnikov, Andrey

Area of Concentration

Statistics, Art History

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between acquisitions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (formerly the independent exhibition space Project Studio 1, stationed in Long Island City’s repurposed schoolhouse Public School 1) . Particular attention was given to how the influences might change before and after the 1994-2000 merger of the two institutions. The thesis also addresses the challenges involved with collecting ephemeral or conceptual artworks. Binary and cumulative logistic regression were used to assess the significance of artist and exhibition features on whether an artist who exhibited at PS1 had a work that is acquired into the permanent collection of MoMA, and how quickly that acquisition occured. Results of the regression models fitted in this project suggest that the acquisitions coming from PS1 exhibitions are most clearly linked to artists who are already established, as measured by previous acquisitions, contradicting the idea that PS1 exclusively deals with artists for whom the traditional museum space is inaccessible. The findings also indicate that the less established artists whose practice involved the use or creation of documenting material seemed to have had more works acquired by MoMA. The data used in this project is MoMA PS1’s exhibition history ranging May 1971 - October 2025, which includes some proto-PS1 exhibitions that were produced by the founder of PS1, and a public MoMA-published database containing information on all works in their permanent collection as of June 2025. The PS1 exhibition history data was obtained from www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/history.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

Download

Share

COinS